Well, maybe. Some of those who visited the Legendary Pictures booth at the San Diego Comic Con got a t-shirt sporting a new image of Godzilla. Things being what they are, it was only natural to assume that this is a design concept image for the new Godzilla film that is in development at Legendary.

Turns out that Legendary is saying that, while the image is definitely theirs, it isn’t necessarily related to the film in development. That’s confusing. Why would Legendary toss the image around at Comic Con if it isn’t neccessarily related to the film? Sure, it could be early concept art and not to be taken as final, but to downplay even the relation to the film is odd.

Regardless, this image sports almost no features that make the big lizard look even vaguely like the ugly design in Roland Emmerich’s 1998 film. It is far closer to the classic Japanese design than what we saw in Emmerich’s movie. The head looks good, the thunder thighs are there, and the other divergent elements of the Emmerich design are gone. So, if nothing else, take this as a suggestion that the new film might really be going in the right direction.

At the Legendary booth there was also a little augmented reality thing where you could walk in front of a webcam to see Godzilla breathing fire from your shirt. It’s fairly goofy, but you can see a demo of the AR effect here.